Aboard Click-clack’s vessel, Sam soon found himself in a cell, transported there by Click-clack. After several minutes, he came to visit Sam and explained that he’d done this to help Sam avoid “the ladies”. But Sam indicated that he wouldn’t mind seeing the ladies again, so he soon found himself face-to-face with the Furies, who were simply delighted to see their Azamadra again!

After they left to prepare the ‘Mind Sifter’, Sam realized that this “reunion” was something he’d been a fool to ask for, so he escaped his cell by assuming Gaseous Form and entering the ship’s air recycling vents. After becoming Invisible and damaging several doors, he found his way into the Hanger Bay control room, knocked out the drow ensign on duty there, stealing her comm-badge and Walkman in the process.

After this he vented the hanger bay to vacuum, he tried to get back to the door to the main hanger, but wound up killing one guard before being trapped by internal security shields and beamed back into his cell sans equipment. The youngest of the Furies then arrived to finger-waggle at him and inform him that they were almost ready for him.

While Sam sat nude in his cell to consider his options, Click-clack contacted him using Telepathy to inform him that he had good news, and bad news. The bad news was that undergoing the Mind-sifter was going to be excruciatingly painful. The good news was that while Sam was in the Sifter, he’d rewritten the program that would be executed, and that rather than turn Sam into the Furies happy little trained assassin (the role it seemed he’d been born to fulfill) the chair would instead make him a pure alchemist (essentially stripping the Vivisectionist archetype, a move the player had wanted anyway). It would then malfunction (which would increase the pain 10-fold) as several of the ship’s systems experienced power overloads and malfunctions; this should allow Sam’s allies the opportunity to effect his rescue, if in fact they had been trying to do so.

Back under Sanctuary, the rest of the group learned that Losien had succeeded in slaying Mordenkainen, and as Rary and Warnes re-entered the room to see what all the yelling was about, they found the party hovering around and over his body. Fortunately, before wrong conclusions could be drawn, Tenser assured the the other arch-mages that it had been Losien and not the group. On learning that Sam had been teleported away (with Losien’s body) by some form of non-magical means, Rary muttered something about damned Fraal and hurried off, saying that he would attempt to locate them.

As Elerra rested, preparing to Resurrect Mordenkainen, Tenser briefly explained who and what the Fraal were, and claimed to doubt their involvement, as they had as much to lose in the Wane of Magic as anyone. Shortly after Elerra brought Mordenkainen back, Rary returned and announced that he had finally penetrated the ship’s defenses and retrieved Sam.

Though glad to have Sam back, several members of the group urged Rary to also retrieve Losien’s body, so that they could render it un-Resurectable. He then called for an Unseen Servant to bring him his equipment, and he soon drew Losien’s lifeless body out through his scrying bowl and into the room, where the party promptly beheaded him.

The following day the group used an Interplanetary Teleport to Greyhawk (courtesy of Mordenkainen), so that they could consult with the Society of Gnomergan and it’s growing map of Liga’s ley line network. For his part, Mordenkainen added several sections to the map, outlining the regions newly arrived on Liga since the Night of Fire (primarily the islands of Pan Tang, Londra, Melnibone, the so-called Purple Isle, Xoxal, Neulandia, Gashtalund, and Duruzlan).

Further consultation with Kosha revealed that another high probability site had been located, in the far western lands of the Lunar Empire, specifically over the city of Glamour, where a vast number of powerful ley lines converged and appeared to be supporting a small copy (?) of Krynn’s moon, Lunitari in the skies overhead.

Another site had potentially been located in the Emirate of G’dar, specifically a fortress located 15 miles outside a city identified as Zemeth. The two agents who had reported the site had gone silent since their initial report, and the Divination Squad was saying they were dead, but Kosha preferred to reserve judgement. As part of their report, however, they had mentioned sighting a middle-aged man of Oeridian descent (who easily stood out among the local humans, all of whom boasted blue eyes, pure black hair and skin as pale as the Suloise).

Tentatively identifying this as Dree of ixworth, the group retired for the evening, and on the following morning Elerra used a Locate Person to attempt to find Dree. They found him in a dank cell, nailed to a circular wooden disk. With him were four humans wearing hooded black robes, all of whom matched the description of the local humans. The one who seemed in charge asked questions that another translated into Common, but none of the language spells the party kept ready would translate this tongue. In addition, each time the leader spoke, Elerra’s spider birthmark itched, and his words sent shivers of dread and anxiety down Alexia’s back.

The interrogation seemed to center on the ritual the party hoped to stop, and one particularly disturbing line of questions ran along the lines of “… and this ritual will kill ONLY the Gods of Magic? What of the rest?” The party quickly decided to ‘rescue’ Dree from his captors, using a Greater Teleport to arrive in the hallway outside the chamber. For their trouble they found themselves Slowed and unable to act for several seconds after their arrival.

While the party battled the guards and one of the mages from inside the chamber in the hall, those remaining inside blocked the door with a Wall of Void and fled the area with Dree, whom they literally tore off the wall. As we broke for the evening, the group was finishing off the guards and planning to Locate Dree a second time, as they could not allow him to escape….